Gallipoli not the only war to define Australian warfare

Gary Foley

As an Aboriginal person who had family serve in World War I, I am acutely aware that there are many Aboriginal families who had relatives who fought at Gallipoli.I am nevertheless always deeply concerned each Anzac Day about the way in which Gallipoli has become so politicised in the evolving memory of so many Australians. As historian Don Watson has written, "the more politicians and media commentators talk of the values of Anzac Day, traduce it for convenient contemporary instruction and daub themselves with the soldiers' moral courage, the more like a kitsch religion it becomes".

In the process of the politicisation of Anzac Day and events almost a century ago on the Gallipoli peninsula, I feel that many Australians are further entrenching an attitude of denial about key aspects of their own history. They are seeking to divert attention away from earlier wars that had more to do with defining the Australian national character than Gallipoli did. By that I mean the colonial "wars" that many in Australia still have great difficulty in even accepting as wars.

The politicisation of our historical memory can be seen through two phases. The first phase was the sudden outburst of patriotic nationalism that emerged during the 1988 bicentennial celebrations. This event was tagged in a multimillion-dollar publicity campaign as the "Celebration of a Nation", a slogan that was at the time parodied by Aboriginal activists as the "Masturbation of the Nation". But it was this occasion, presided over by then Labor prime minister Bob Hawke, that led to the beginning of the phenomenon where young Australians bedeck themselves with Aussie flags and become patriotically drunk on nationalistic occasions such as Australia Day and Anzac Day.

The other phase occurred during the period of John Howard's prime ministership when two things happened. The first was when Howard attended the 90th anniversary of the ill-fated Gallipoli landing on Anzac Day in 2005 and declared that the Anzac legend had helped Australians define themselves. He said: "Anzac Day is a chance to reflect with pride on what it means to be Australian and the values we hold dear: determination, courage, compassion and resourcefulness".

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Howard had also presided over what became known as the "history wars" back home during his prime ministership. This was an unsavoury episode that is of particular importance to Aboriginal people because it involves the "whitewashing" and "airbrushing" of the history of Australia. In 1993 Professor Geoffrey Blainey coined the phrase "black armband view of history". That phrase was used, pejoratively or otherwise, by some Australian social scientists, commentators and, particularly, Howard to describe historians whom they viewed as having presented an overly critical portrayal of Australian history since European settlement.

Implicit in Howard's use of the phrase was a sense of denial about the true nature of the frontier conflict. That sense of denial was amplified during the "history wars" by a small group of conservative academics, most notably Keith Windschuttle, who became a celebrity in a nation seeking to continue its long tradition of denial about its treatment of Aboriginal people. Windschuttle was controversially appointed to the board of the ABC by the Howard government.

The politicisation of our national memorialisation of Anzac Day is further evident when we have a former Howard government minister Brendan Nelson as the director of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, and former South Australian premier Mike Rann visiting Gallipoli as a Commonwealth war graves commissioner. With so many former politicians infesting the memorialisation landscape it is little wonder that politics dominates discussion about what exactly we should be remembering and commemorating.

Nelson claims that colonial conflict does not constitute what he and the War Memorial consider a "war". But, ironically Nelson and the War Memorial are much better disposed to the acknowledgement of Aboriginal involvement in the wars conducted by the Australian nation, even when some of those battles such as the Gallipoli campaign were more about fighting on behalf of Britain rather than Australia. This attitude reflects a broader national discomfort with the idea that Aboriginal warriors in the colonial era were fighting a "war"against an invading force.

However, as prominent historian Henry Reynolds asserts, "If there was no war, then thousands of Aborigines were murdered in a century-long, continent-wide crime wave tolerated by government. There seems to be no other option. It must be one or the other".

Dr Gary Foley is a historian at Victoria University

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72 comments so far

Well said. I would feel much more comfortable about the ANZAC centenary commemoration if some of its $325 million budget had been diverted to documenting for all time the battles our indigenous people have endured. Australian history should not just be white history. I dread the thought of our leaders gaining political capital from a year of royal honours, royal visitors and ANZAC centenary commemoration. I would also like to see the history of the stolen generations much better protected.

Commenter

Blue skies not blue ties

Date and time

April 24, 2014, 10:26PM

Lets do the Battle of Yering.

Commenter

Kingstondude

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

April 25, 2014, 7:29AM

"I would also like to see the history of the stolen generations much better protected."

Blue Skies, don't you know that the documentation relating to the "Stolen Generations" is locked away in the NSW State Records office and is not available for inspection ?

How much more protected would you like it to be ?

Commenter

Saltbush Bill

Date and time

April 25, 2014, 8:01AM

ANZAC is about ANZAC soldiers... all of them.

FFS everything that is done in AUST is deemed racist or pro-white. I don't understand the confusion... Too many people believe that hurt feelings mean something.

Sure the Aboriginals who initially inhabited the land were slaughtered... It was an invasion and they lost. They never went by the name ANZAC. The colonists never went by the name ANZAC. They're not remembered on ANZAC day.

There was no Geneva Convention then... people on both sides were desperate for their own reasons and what we would call war crimes today were likely many. The only difference between the people on both sides is that in one case their parents taught them to use ships and guns and the other case sticks.

Nobody involved is alive today however we are all living in Australia. Australia can be what we want to make it. We can bitch about what happened 200 years ago or we can LEARN from our mistakes and make sure it never happens again.

If you want to get technical, go back 10 million years (no idea how long) we all come from he same tribe. We've all brothers... There is no us and them.. Only US.

I live in the country of Australia, which happens to exist on the continent of Australia. The government has existed for 200 odd years. In that time it has send soldiers over sea and many of those soldiers died. This current government has elected to nominate a public holiday (this holiday only exists in the jurisdiction of the Australian government) to honor the soldiers it commissioned to die.

What is wrong with that?

Commenter

Jon

Location

Melb

Date and time

April 25, 2014, 3:14PM

With another ANZAC day upon us I reflect on the question of whether or not the Australian public and current and ex military personnel appreciate the great magnanimity shown to the ANZACs by the Turks in allowing an invading force to pay tribute to their fallen on Turkish soil.

A parallel would be Australians allowing the Japanese to establish a war shrine in Darwin to commemorate their dead bomber pilots who attacked the city during world war 2.

And ever after welcome annual Japanese pilgrimages to the shrine..

Commenter

AN EX-SERVICEMAN

Date and time

April 25, 2014, 12:49AM

Well said Ex. I too am amazed at the generosity of spirit shown by the Turks. I have never managed to see the connection between Australia "coming of age" and Gallipoli. My grandfather served on the Western Front and survived, albeit well scarred from TB. Was his service less?Parto, I think you have the wrong end of the stick. Most of the white settlers were very nervous of the Aboriginals and determined to drive them away by any means. Of course there were exceptions and it wasn't necessarily organised with generals and all (that comes much later) but it was effectively a war between peoples, just like both North and SOuth America and today between China and the Uigar and Tibetans.All the same thing by any name.Can't be undone, but surely not our finest hour.

Commenter

Chris

Location

Kiama

Date and time

April 25, 2014, 10:00AM

"Parto, I think you have the wrong end of the stick. Most of the white settlers were very nervous of the Aboriginals and determined to drive them away by any means." Chris,without arguing about Terra Nullius, or the rights and wrongs of colonisation, etc, etc, wouldn't it be blatantly obvious that you would take action if you felt that your family and/or possessions were being threatened. Try putting yourself in the position of a settler who felt under threat. They didn't have the same perspective that we do, and many people nowadays forget about that in the rush to put a modern spin on events in a different time and place.

Commenter

Parto

Location

Wild West

Date and time

April 25, 2014, 11:11AM

Parto at 1:11, great that you are able to put yourself in the shoes of the settlers, whose family and/or possessions were indeed threatened. (No-one's suggesting we should ignore their experience, BTW.)

But now go the final step. Imagine yourself as one of the aboriginals, whose very country was being stolen from them.

It's really not so hard.

Just read Reynolds's latest book. It really will clear up a few things for you.

Commenter

Anthony Allen

Date and time

April 25, 2014, 12:38PM

Anthony, I think that I've made my point. I don't have such an overriding passion for the subject to want to pick up Reynolds' work. I trust that you, who seem to have a deep seated interest, have based your opinions on a greater depth of study that just the work of one scholar, lest you should develop a myopic view of the subject. While Windschuttle's work has been widely criticized, it has no less a place in scholarly writing than does Reynolds' work; as long as it is rigorously researched and peer accepted, then it should be accepted, whether you agree with its sentiments or opinions, or not.I feel that many people are sometimes so blinkered by ideology that they are unable to dispassionately form opinions based on evidence from disparate sources, and then merely become mouthpieces for views that belong to someone else.

Commenter

Parto

Location

Wild West

Date and time

April 25, 2014, 1:38PM

Thank you. It is becoming increasingly difficult to raise criticism of Anzac Day in the community. I too, see that it has become a 'celebration' of white, male values with no place for others.